Echoes of Kirby.
I thought of Kirby and Dalton, Brock Weld, and the guy at the dealership. I pictured the robust and attractive woman I’d seen on the car commercials and had to admit that even on a screen Natalie Strait had some not-quite-visible attractant.
“Nats knows this and uses it,” he said. “Sometimes, she pretends to be flirting, sometimes not. Either way, I understand how she’s coming across to these guys. How it’s affecting them and what they think their options are. Which has put me in the protective-husband position a lot. Not something I aspired to. It takes energy. Jealousy can creep in. Worst emotion in the world. Makes you do crazy stuff. You are always in the wrong. Makes you second-guess. Your leg. Your dick. You. Gets you where you live.”
We came down the grade and headed for the campaign headquarters in Escondido.
“I lost a nut in the blast,” he said. “My favorite. There’s some ugly scars. And some nerve damage, but the doctors say the damage is in my head. I’m okay that way but not perfect. I’ve hardly told anyone that.”
I didn’t see any point in telling him that he’d said as much to me, drunk, in the Sacramento men’s room.
“It sounds like I’m complaining about her, but I’m not,” said Dalton. “If I could go back, and know what’s ahead, I’d do it all over again with her. She’s like… a diamond you find, and when you get it home you see the flaws in it and they make the diamond even more valuable. More one-of-a-kind.”
He took another draw and propped the flask on his half-natural, half-manufactured knee. Let the flask top swing loose on its chain. Rolled up one sleeve of his business shirt, switched hands on the flask, and rolled up the other.
“I want her back, Roland. Not out there in a world that can hurt her. I know you’re trying. She’s trying, too. Asking for help. Leaving her rings in her car as a way to communicate with me.”
“We’re going to find her,” I said.
“Ten days. It’s got to be some kind of record.”
The Strait reelection campaign headquarters stood in a stately neighborhood of fifties-style homes, some now converted for commercial use. A law office, an orthopedic surgeon, an architect. Pepper trees and trophy citrus, salvaged and proudly groomed. A boulevard from Southern California’s past still trooping into the future.
A uniformed private security guard stood outside the front door, armed but essentially defenseless against a mailed bomb.
As we stepped in, Dalton’s unannounced visit sent a visible charge through the faithful. In the halting of tasks and the turning of faces and the pause of conversations I saw that nearly all of the people here were at least as old as the neighborhood, as much a part of the past as the trees outside. He was their young one. They drifted toward him subtly, more drawn than moving with a purpose.
He proceeded into them with greetings and handshakes, hugs and slaps on shoulders. Familiar comments, smiles, and confidential laughter. Dalton grabbed a donut from a pink box, turned back to me, and waved me over.
He stood on a folding chair, a big man with a mop of curly brown hair and a donut in one hand, his cuffs rolled up and a strangely serene air around him. I realized that this was Dalton at his happiest. His most whole again. Surrounded, supported, and followed. Standing on their shoulders to dream his dream.
“I apologize for making excuses about Natalie,” he said. “Any minute I expected her to walk in here. You know how stubborn hope is. But she didn’t. I knew from that first day that something was very wrong. That she needed help. I didn’t want you all to worry.”
Silence. Not a question from Dalton’s loyalists. Not a murmur.
“I apologize, too, for the false and malicious claims that my own federal government has brought against me. You all know how honest I am, and what a stickler Natalie was for keeping the books right. These charges represent a new low in American politics and I vow to fight those charges with all my might.”
“Yeah, Dalton!”
“Kick ’em right back, Mr. Strait!”
“We’re all in for you, Dalton!”
He hopped down, finished his donut, threw some hugs. Let them take selfies with him.
Half an hour later we were headed through Escondido toward Dalton’s house.
“Hey, Roland, park in that Chevron lot right there, by the air and water pumps, will you?”
I pulled into one of the parking slots by the pumps.
“I don’t need air or water,” I said.
“Me neither.” He took another long draw off his flask. “I need certain things a man in my position is denied. It’s a heavy burden. I think you’ll understand.”
He pocketed the flask and got out, just as a black Lincoln limousine pulled alongside me. The black-suited driver stepped out and opened the rear door for Dalton.
“Good morning, Mr. Strait.”
“Morning, Joe.”
“Another beautiful day.”
Dalton looked back at me, waved and nodded before getting in. Beyond him, deep in black leather, sat Asclepia Pharmaceutical representative McKenzie Doyle, a recessed spotlight aimed at the phone on her crossed knee, readers down on her nose, looking at me without expression.
Twenty-Six
Lark had agreed to meet me later that afternoon at the Duffytown shooting range. I told him I had some information on Dalton and Tola Strait that he might find interesting. This was enough to get me one hour with my friendly neighborhood FBI. It was also true enough, though the larger truth was that I was planning an ambush.
Duffytown is a mock town on a navy base, part modern and part Old West, named after an old San Diego sheriff — a good place for law enforcement training. Targets jump out at you from doorways or windows if you want them to, or you can just take old-fashioned range practice if you’d rather.
The place was bustling, befitting the bombing death of a local congressman. All manner of law enforcers squeezing off rounds. The rattle of automatic fire. A pair of fighter jets out of Miramar roaring low overhead.
We shot conventional — life-sized paper silhouettes on retracting cables at ten, twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred feet. Lark used his .40-caliber Glock and I used my vintage .45 Colt Gold Cup, a gift from my father.
I have 20/10 vision, a genetic gift. One hundred feet is a long shot with an open-sight handgun, good eyes or not. A trained pistolero will put eight out of eight shots in the black all day long at a hundred feet. A street cop who qualifies four times a year at twenty-five feet because he’s required to, won’t.
On this clear spring day my eyes were sound and the rhythm found itself and I beat ultra-competitive Lark in our first round. Six of eight in the black for PI Ford; five for Special Agent Lark.
He set his earmuffs on the bench and examined his target with tense disappointment. Poked his fingers through the outside-the-silhouette holes from behind, as if he could make them disappear.
“Mike, tell me about the craggy-faced old agent who interrupted us in your conference room that day. As you know, he was with Dalton and Tola Strait in Sacramento Monday night after Dalton’s bill got shot down. Heath Overdale was there, too — the freight and shipping lobbyist.”
Lark looked at me, all suspicion. Anger, too, at the risk he’d taken by bringing me into his San Diego field office, and how the simple opening of a conference room door had blown a cover. I remembered the annoyance on Lark’s face when the older man had looked in.
“Back off, Roland.”
“Why?”
A long consideration from Lark, wheels turning. “What put that idea in your head about Sacramento?”